UDS Navrongo Campus to be upgraded into autonomous university
The Navrongo Campus of the University for Development Studies (UDS) is to be upgraded into an autonomous university to be known as the University for Technical and Applied Sciences by August 2017.
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This followed a recommendation made by an expert panel constituted by President John Dramani Mahama.
The panel submitted an interim report suggesting that the UDS Navrongo campus should remain as a university running courses in the Applied Sciences and Mathematics without changing its focus.
The UDS Navrongo campus would still be required to offer those courses because the experts believe the country needs more universities that would provide courses for students in the Applied Sciences and Mathematics.
The Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, made this known during the Government for the People Forum at Bolgatanga on Thursday. The event, which was organised by the Ministry of Communications, was aimed, among other objectives, at creating avenues to engage the people in discussions, outline government initiatives and offer the citizenry the opportunity to interrogate ministers of state, to seek answers to issues of primary concern to them.
Mr Ablakwa indicated that a second round of consultations would be carried out by the panel members to enable chiefs, opinion leaders, education authorities and other stakeholders in the region to make their inputs before the full implementation of the programme.
Government’s vision
He further mentioned that the vision of the government was to ensure every region had at least one autonomous public university.
Concerning the conversion of the Bolgatanga Polytechnic to a technical university, Mr Ablakwa pointed out that all the facilities in the polytechnic were being retooled to meet the conversion criteria and global needs.
He explained that a Technical Universities Bill had been laid before Parliament and it is expected that when the bill is passed into law, the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities would take off by September this year.
The minister announced that US$200 million had been raised to support Technical Vocation Education and Training in the country, with the Bolgatanga Technical Institute undergoing a major facelift in infrastructural development to give a major boost to that sector.
He stated that a certification framework was being worked out to ensure that all artisans in the country would acquire certificates that would empower them to deliver quality services and to charge appropriate fees that would be commensurate with services rendered to the public.
Pace of work on projects
Touching on the proposed community day senior high school projects in the Upper East Region, Mr Ablakwa expressed disappointment with what he termed as the slow pace of work on the projects.
According to him, the government has fulfilled its part of the bargain and the contractors should have completed the projects six months ago.
He mentioned that because of the delay, the authorities had to terminate one of the contracts in the Northern Region and added that the rest had been served with warning letters.
Feeding grant
About feeding grant, the minister said the Ministry of Finance released GH¢44 million to senior high schools in the three regions of the north about two weeks ago, saying those who were in boarding schools were expected to report to school on Sunday, June 26.
He stated that 300 buses and 200 pick-up vehicles had been given to educational institutions and stressed that not all the institutions could benefit from the facility because some of them had already benefitted from similar interventions about four or eight years ago.
"We have 862 senior high schools and 147 tertiary institutions in the country and so certainly not all these institutions could be satisfied at the same time," Mr Ablakwa pointed out.